Horner denies Red Bull 'hostage exchange for Mekies' with Ferrari
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Christian Horner denies that any engineers from his team have left for Ferrari. Rumours recently surfaced about staff members swapping Red Bull Racing for the Italian team, but Horner says none of this is true.
The rumours surfaced after AlphaTauri announced it had recruited Laurent Mekies to succeed Franz Tost, who is leaving as team boss at Red Bull's sister team at the end of the 2023 Formula 1 season.
Horner on alleged Red Bull engineers' departure
"As usual, there's plenty of speculation," Horner said at the press conference in Miami. "Will there be a hostage exchange for Laurent Mekies? Well, we don't have any hostages. In terms of personnel moving to Ferrari, certainly, at a senior or medium level, there's nothing planned."
Italian media even mentioned names already, but even those reports are not based on anything, according to Horner. "Individuals that have been mentioned in connection with Ferrari came to see me last week and mentioned their disbelief in some of these rumours," the Red Bull team boss continued.
Horner added that it is "inevitable" that at some point people will leave to join another F1 team, but right now there is no sign of that happening. "There's no plans for any senior members of our team to be joining Maranello," Horner said.